"Learn to See Through Watching Movies",

"What if no more movies were made? What if I don't get to watch anything tonight? I've got no time to read, because I'm writing myself today. The last movies I played hardly arrived. These were no hard-brainers, just your standard fare, don't really care, no need to share. Don't need no videostore, or even watch tv anymore. I'm full-up, I've got like information overload, my pleasure papillae have been satisfied, not once but multiplied. Who's next in line to surrender a couple of years of their lives, just to entertain me, for one hour, one-and-a half, two maybe? Keep me busy? When a story is being told, the storyteller could be paid. But the storyteller can also pay his audience. It is mighty unclear where the thanks need go. What is clear is the unrelenting appetite people have for stories. The number of stories which reaches a person has increased exponentially over the centuries. The last century not even the overall increase of human beings surpassed it. Stories all started around the campfire. They were passed on orally, and evolved along the way. Then they were written down. Written down words in turn got acted out again. These were the pre-mass-media days. Photography can be seen as a means to visually record time, a speck of time. Film is continuous photography. An edited film is a collage of pieces of recorded time, not necessarily in chronological order. Basic visual concepts of montage were developed without the disturbance of sound. The combination of film and sound was the birth of the audio-visual medium, which still ranks today as man's most sophisticated means of communication. The medium is on three tracks. It uses image, sound and word. Synchronisation of these tracks makes communication most effective. As for stories in general, there's the fiction and the non-fiction kind. (And everything in between.) Film fiction went from recorded theatre to it's own. Film non-fiction went from the wonders of never-before-seen imagery to the dazzling abyss of the human soul. The one's truth was not as much in the calculated reconstruction, but the more in everything the makers did not mean. The other's truth remains elusive to this day. Then there's also the delicate balance between mood and plot. I guess personally I'd take mood over plot most days. Like it has been proven time and again, that sound has more impact on the receiver than image; I feel it is mood which will linger on longer, when plot is already long forgotten. To me this encyclopaedia of film history is the great man-made wonder of the world. A friend once wrote me: "All film is pretence". That might be true, but film is also evidence. As explanation I suggest the sub-conscious nature involved in the making of a film. The double nature of the message that was intended on the one hand, and on the other all the things that were taken for granted, but stand out in today's view. Your assignments then will be to figure out which things that we don't notice today, will stand out tomorrow, and after, in the eyes of our grandchildren. A film is here to stay and as time moves along, so will perspectives change. Film watching is a very passive business, and it needs an emphatic audience. But listening is mostly not talking, and the taking in of information may result in some sort of meditative state. Many a time I have been misled by my own moods, or thought something to be original when it wasn't, and had to re-evaluate a film in secondary viewings. My own subjectivity is also very confusing. But I'm continually, but cautiously trying to raise self-awareness. By me, myself and I, the reflection of film can be very constructive and useful for these purposes. I cannot stress enough how I don't just want to know the most stories, but also feel obliged to select from the abundance the best stories, in history. I've seen enough movies by now to know when to say quit. In this lifetime there's not enough playtime to see everything. Watch what you watch."